(Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of
people were without power on Tuesday after a deadly storm that brought
tornadoes, high winds, hail and heavy rain to the central United States.

Illinois was particularly hard hit as flooding, downed trees and
fires caused by lightning strikes snarled traffic, cut power and
delayed or canceled hundreds of flights in and out of Chicago.

"It's been a ride. This was a lot of wind and a lot of lightning,"
said ComEd spokeswoman Kim Morris-Johnson.

About 400,000 ComEd customers lost power in the storm and 153,000
remained without power on Tuesday afternoon, mainly in the region
south of Chicago, the company said.

Iowa also took a direct hit, with hail measuring 3 to 4 inches (7.6
to 10 cm) in diameter and peak winds of 90 mph (145 kph) recorded,
said National Weather Service spokesman Pat Slattery. Cars were
damaged and windows were broken by the hailstorms, the NWS said.

Two men died in northern Indiana early on Tuesday during the storm,
according to officials. One of the men died when a tree fell on a
mobile home in Kosciusko County, the sheriff's department said.

Another person died in Linn County, Iowa, the sheriff’s office there
said, when a building collapsed in heavy winds.

Authorities in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday afternoon recovered
the body of a 17-year-old boy who was swept into a storm drain on
Monday night after heavy rains hit the area, said Greg Buelow, the
city’s public safety spokesman.

Cedar Rapids received 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 cm) of rain on Sunday
and Monday, leaving the ground saturated even before the Monday
afternoon storm, Buelow said.

Slattery said the storm system triggered a "mini-tornado outbreak"
in northern Missouri, including one in the Kansas City metropolitan
area that toppled several trees onto roadways. Twisters also damaged
homes in Nebraska and Iowa, he said.

In southeast Michigan, about 140,000 DTE Energy customers lost power
at the height of the storm because of high winds and lightning and
90,000 were without service on Tuesday afternoon.

At Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, more than 200 flights
were canceled and 600 delayed on Monday night because of the storm,
according to Flightaware.com.

(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City; Additional reporting by
David Bailey in Minneapolis and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee;
Editing by Bill Trott and Peter Cooney)